Talk:Margalit Fox

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An editor has inserted material about a controversy concerning Fox's obituary of Michael Hastings, which has been removed. Please review Wikipedia's guidelines about WP:Neutrality and WP:BLP. Wikipedia articles about living persons must be written neutrally and in a balanced manner. The proposed new section is neither neutral nor balanced and, indeed, contains a major misstatement: The New York Times did not contain any factual inaccuracies, and the paper did not correct any inaccuracies, except for a spelling error that is not related to the issues being raised. First of all, note that Fox's editor, Bill McDonald, agreed with Fox and wrote: "We see no reason to change the obituary". Even Margaret Sullivan, the "public editor", acknowledged that the obituary was "not factually inaccurate". She noted McDonald's further defense of the obit (he wrote that it was not only right, but necessary for Fox to raise the inspector general’s report the way she did in "an honest obit about him") but argued that the obit didn't "adequately get across the essence of Mr. Hastings’s journalism or the regard in which he was held". Ultimately, the obit was not changed, so The Times still stands behind it. See also this analysis. Given all this, this "controversy" is a tempest in a teapot, and giving it particular coverage in Fox's very short bio would unbalance the article and be, in my opinion, a violation of our guideline on WP:Biographies of Living Persons. -- Ssilvers (talk) 21:17, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

I agree with Ssilvers above - the additions by the anon IP are inaccurate and I have reverted them accordingly. Jack1956 (talk) 22:16, 30 June 2014 (UTC)

There is also the WP:UNDUE rule to consider, and the anonymous editor's additions plainly breached it, quite apart from being factually incorrect. One doesn't know what the IP's agenda is, but Wikipedia's principles of balance and neutrality must come first. Tim rileytalk 09:08, 1 July 2014 (UTC)